Practical and Practice issues for Professionals who practice in the area of taxation. Moral, social and economic issues relating to taxes, including international issues, the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, state tax issues, etc. Not for "tax protestor" issues, which should be posted in the "tax protestor" forum above. The advice or opinion given herein should not be relied on for any purpose whatsoever. Also examines cookie-cutter deals that have no economic substance but exist only to generate losses, as marketed by everybody from solo practitioner tax lawyers to the major accounting firms.

Although some of the scammers may be operating outside the United States, I'm thinking that at least some of them are inside the U.S.

I would give a week's compensation just to be there to observe when one of the scammers gets a surprise, not-so-friendly, visit from Federal law enforcement officers with badges and firearms, and is placed under arrest, handcuffed, given his or her Miranda warning, and is taken away.

Here's a reminder -- for any scammer who happens upon this thread:

Whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

--18 USC section 912.

These crimes are investigated by the office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

...why is anyone in this [losthorizons] community paying the least attention to...'Larry Williams' [Famspear], or other purveyors of disinformation from...quatloos? – Pete Hendrickson, former inmate 15406-039, Fed’l Bureau of Prisons

...why is anyone in this [losthorizons] community paying the least attention to...'Larry Williams' [Famspear], or other purveyors of disinformation from...quatloos? – Pete Hendrickson, former inmate 15406-039, Fed’l Bureau of Prisons

Got this same call today, 18 Feb 2016, in Delaware. Caller ID said it was a cellphone but the call sounded like a robot caller. Did not address me by name or indicate that it knew or cared who answered the phone. Used the number 202-352-6228, which is identified as a cellphone number. I tried calling back - no answer. I will report this to the IRS.

I have gotten 3 calls on my answering machine; two of the callback numbers were 253-214-3854 and 817-349-3094. The third number had static on the message, so it does seem to indicate that the callers are using cell phones. And no doubt that the phone numbers are spoofed to avoid tracing.

"I could be dead wrong on this" - Irwin Schiff

"Do you realize I may even be delusional with respect to my income tax beliefs? " - Irwin Schiff

The Observer wrote:I have gotten 3 calls ... no doubt that the phone numbers are spoofed to avoid tracing.

You can assume they are. Caller ID has effectively been rendered useless. Unless and until the regulators pull their head out of their collective you-know-whats the industries and scammers that need to hide will continue to take advantage of the situation.

The Honorable Judge Roy BeanThe world is a car and you're a crash-test dummy.The Devil Makes Three

Probably the link has expired by now since the RCMP and the CRA are very speedy at removing these type of scams. It might be fun to play with them for awhile though. I must admit I keep one computer that I use for accessing the web using Tor to hide my IP and have some interesting apps to create fake caller id's that I use for talking to scammers.

On Monday, April 18, 2016, I received another phony IRS call on my land line at home. Sounded like the same people as last year: a computerized voice, referring to "Internal Revenue Services." The message was changed, though; now the scammers claimed that the IRS had already "filed a lawsuit" against me.

For the bad guys who get caught, I propose that we bring back public flogging and locking them in stocks in the public square.

...why is anyone in this [losthorizons] community paying the least attention to...'Larry Williams' [Famspear], or other purveyors of disinformation from...quatloos? – Pete Hendrickson, former inmate 15406-039, Fed’l Bureau of Prisons

This message is intended to contact you. My name is James Caston and I'm calling in [garbled] action. Executed by the US treasury intending your serious attention. Ignoring this will be an intentional attempt to avoid initial appearance before a magistrate judge or a [garbled] for a federal criminal offense. My number is 936-679-7059. I repeat 936679759. I'd wife [garbled, probably should read “I’d like”] you to cooperate with us and help us to help you. Thank you.

(The message was converted from voice to text by his Vonage phone service.)

...why is anyone in this [losthorizons] community paying the least attention to...'Larry Williams' [Famspear], or other purveyors of disinformation from...quatloos? – Pete Hendrickson, former inmate 15406-039, Fed’l Bureau of Prisons

Five suspects have been arrested for involvement in a growing IRS impersonation scam that has bilked an estimated $36.5 million from 6,400 victims nationwide, federal officials said Tuesday. ... Since mid-April, some scammers have instructed victims to pay purported IRS tax debts with Apple iTunes cards, TIGTA said.

The Honorable Judge Roy BeanThe world is a car and you're a crash-test dummy.The Devil Makes Three

Police say scammers posing as IRS officials would dial people in the U.S. and threaten them with jail time if they didn’t pay up

THANE, India—Police said three nondescript office buildings on the edge of this booming Mumbai suburb were packed with hundreds of people posing as Internal Revenue Service officials in a scam that has vexed Americans for years.

Authorities arrested 70 people Wednesday alleging they helped manage nine call-centers where around 700 people made thousands of calls a day to try to trick Americans into sending them money.

Police said the call center workers had one job: dial people in the U.S., accuse them of failing to pay their taxes and threaten them with jail time if they didn’t pay up immediately. Police didn’t give an estimate on how much money the operation netted, but the ability to employ hundreds of English-speaking people suggests it had significant revenue.

. . . . .

U.S. authorities have struggled to combat an epidemic of swindlers targeting taxpayers. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, an IRS watchdog, said it has received more than 1.7 million complaints in the last three years from people reporting phone calls from swindlers impersonating IRS agents. More than 8,800 victims have paid more than $47 million as a result of these scams, it added.

Representatives of the IRS and the Tigta watchdog declined to comment on the raid.

Last year a man named Sahil Patel was sentenced to 14 years in prison in New York for running the U.S. side of a huge IRS fraud that used call centers in India.

That scam squeezed about $1.2 million from hundreds of victims in the U.S. by impersonating law-enforcement officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the IRS, and claiming people owed money for bogus financial crimes. The scammers made thousands of calls and used technology to hide where they were calling from and where victims’ payments were being sent.

"Yes Burnaby49, I do in fact believe all process servers are peace officers. I've good reason to believe so." Robert Menard in his May 28, 2015 video "Process Servers".

I gotten at least five of these calls over the past year and a half or so -- the most recent one on September 23. They are almost comical. The latest one was a male speaking English with an accent that sounds like he is from somewhere in India, identifying himself as "Keith Jordan" or some such name (as if to fool someone into thinking that he is American). Yet, people are being scammed by these calls. It's sad.

...why is anyone in this [losthorizons] community paying the least attention to...'Larry Williams' [Famspear], or other purveyors of disinformation from...quatloos? – Pete Hendrickson, former inmate 15406-039, Fed’l Bureau of Prisons

At one point, several years ago, these con-artists stumbled on the teletype devices used by the deaf (TTYs or TDDs) to communicate over telephone lines and were making TTY calls to deaf people, saying they were IRS and demanding money, etc. and managed to scoop up considerable money. This was, as far as I could tell, done mostly in the DC area and possibly a few other big cities where the Deaf community had managed to publish local directories of TTY numbers.

This con doesn't work so well now because many deaf have ceased using telephone lines altogether in favor of internet camera calls using the Sign Language.

THANE, India— Minaz Husain Ladaf couldn’t believe his luck this summer when he was offered a 40% bump in salary and other perks to work for what he thought was the U.S. government. But when he went to his new workplace to pick up his paycheck this week, he was picked up by the police instead.

Mr. Ladaf and dozens of fellow call-center workers have been locked in dusty jail cells in this booming Mumbai suburb since Wednesday. Police say they managed a telephone “scam center” where close to 700 workers called targeted Americans, pretending to be from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, and raking in an estimated $150,000 a day.

. . . .

But the job could be tough, Mr. Ladaf said, as 99% of the people they called weren’t fooled by the scam. “It was extremely frustrating,” he said. “We took abuse for hours on end.”

Poor babies. You Americans are just too hard on people trying to cheat you.

"Yes Burnaby49, I do in fact believe all process servers are peace officers. I've good reason to believe so." Robert Menard in his May 28, 2015 video "Process Servers".